


More Than a Name

by HiddenTreasures



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Family, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 05:48:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11155518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiddenTreasures/pseuds/HiddenTreasures
Summary: When James heard the word “Daddy” come from a sixteen-month-old’s mouth, he was overjoyed. The only problem was that the child calling him “Daddy” wasn’t his own.





	More Than a Name

“Oh, look, Alexa! Daddy’s here!”

James froze in the middle of crouching down to accept the baby that was sprinting towards him, and the sixteen-month-old girl collided with his shin. She squawked angrily, but James’s ears were still ringing.

“No, no, no. She’s-she’s not my daughter,” James stuttered. “I’m her mum’s… she’s my… Rose’s…”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the daycare employee said, her cheeks flaming red.

“I just pick her up on Thursdays and Fridays for Rose,” James mumbled. “She’s my… er, friend. And neighbor, incidentally. She works late those nights.”

He trailed off lamely, not sure if he or the daycare aide was more mortified.

A little hand was slapping at his legs and a little voice was shouting, “Daddy! Daaaddddyyyyy!”

He glanced down at Alexa, shocked. Hearing her call him ‘Daddy’ pulled at something deep in his chest and lodged an ache in his throat.

“Hey there, Lexy-Loo,” James said, scooping her up into his arms. “Have a good day?”

The baby babbled unintelligibly at him, and he smiled as he listened and nodded indulgently whenever Alexa paused. James grabbed the baby bag then walked to the carpark, and settled her into the car seat he kept in his vehicle at all times.

They made the short drive to his flat, where he set her loose to play with the toys and books he kept in his home for the girl.

James was distracted all evening, trying to work though how he felt about the new moniker Alexa had given to him. He worried about how Rose would react, too. She was his best friend, and he would be lying if he said he didn’t harbor a little crush—okay, a major crush—on her. But in the two years they’d been in each other’s lives again since their school days, she’d never given any sort of sign that she saw him as more than a friend. He was just a mate who regularly babysat her daughter.

What if Rose thought James was trying to take over parenting, by letting the baby call him ‘Daddy’? What if she decided he was becoming too involved in Alexa’s life, and she decided to cut off contact?

James’s lungs seized in his chest at the idea of Rose and her daughter disappearing from his life. He’d grown so fond of them. Well, he was a little more than fond of them. That original fondness had grown into something more like love, but he daren’t call it that. He had no right to call it that.

The baby was asleep by the time Rose got to his flat, and he was glad he wouldn’t be ousted yet. Hopefully he could teach Alexa to call him ‘James’, or at least discourage her from calling him ‘Daddy’, and Rose would be none the wiser.

Of course, he should have known better. When he popped ‘round Rose’s for dinner that weekend, Alexa sprinted up to him and hugged one of his legs. She then tugged at his trousers, wanting to show him something, but he first gave Rose a hug hello, and Alexa evidently wasn’t feeling very patient.

“Daddy!” she said, tugging at him more vigorously.

James blanched, and he saw Rose’s jaw drop in shock. Alexa was still pulling at his leg, but he was looking steadfastly out the window. After nearly a minute of awkward silence—well, near silence, as Alexa was still chanting ‘Daddy Daddy Daddy’—James finally tried to explain.

“I didn’t… she just…” James scratched his hand through his hair as he floundered for words. “This lady at the daycare… She was new… She didn’t know I wasn’t Lexa’s father, and ever since, Lexa’s been calling me ‘Daddy’. I’ve been trying to get her to stop, but ‘James’ is apparently a much more difficult name to pronounce. I’m sorry. She’s not mine. She shouldn’t be calling me that. Completely inappropriate, and all.”

“Right,” Rose said, her tone a little cool.

“Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy!”

“No, sweetheart, come here,” Rose said, bending down to pick up her daughter. The girl squirmed and reached out for James, but before he could accept the child, Rose turned away, leaving James reaching out into the space between them, utterly baffled by Rose’s behavior.

“I think you should go,” Rose said stiffly, her voice cracking.

“What?” James squeaked.

“I think you should leave, James,” Rose repeated.

“But… why?” he asked, feeling a hard knot lodge itself in his stomach as all of his fears were coming to life. Rose must have realized how much he loved her daughter, and it wasn’t something she was comfortable with. She wasn’t going to let him see Alexa ever again. He was never going to see either of them ever again. He felt sick to his stomach, and he couldn’t make his legs move to take him out of her flat.

“Because I won’t have you hurting my daughter!” she snapped.

James blinked, and some of his dread left him.

“Hurt… What?” James asked, feeling so confused.

“She’s sixteen months old!” Rose said. “She doesn’t know better!”

“Rose, stop, please,” James said, his brain working to try and sift through what was happening. “I think we’re having some sort of misunderstanding, because I am honestly and truly baffled right now. Please, can we just _talk_?”

Rose pursed her lips and gave a quick nod.

“Okay, thank you.” He gestured to the couch, and they both sat down. Alexa squirmed in Rose’s arms until she set her down, and the baby ran up to James and tugged at his trousers again. “And can I please go see what she wants to show me so we can have a conversation without her trying to interrupt?”

Rose nodded again, and James allowed Alexa to pull him to the floor. She babbled at him as she guided him to a stacking toy she had been playing with. The colorful rings were all mounted properly on the peg, before the baby took them all off and started re-stacking them, naming the colors as she did.

“Oh, well done, Lexy-Loo!” James exclaimed, and the girl beamed at the praise.

A few minutes later, Rose joined them on the floor, looking less angry than she did before.

“What did you mean earlier about me hurting her?” James asked quietly, accepting the plastic rings as Alexa handed them to him. “I would never. You know that.”

“I know you’d never hurt her intentionally,” Rose said. “But there are still ways you can hurt her. Rejecting her, for one.”

“Rejecting her?” James asked, furrowing his brow.

“You know my dad left when I was a baby,” Rose said, and he nodded. “I went to find him when I was seventeen. And when I did find him, I called him ‘dad’ to his face. He got angry, and he walked away from me and said a bunch of horrible things about me and Mum. That hurt so much, James. And I won’t have my daughter feeling that, either.”

“But… I’m not her dad,” he said blankly. “Unless… did Jimmy come ‘round?” His muscles tightened and he seethed with anger at the idea that the abusive arsehole deigned to talk to Rose.

“No, no,” Rose hurriedly assured. She reached out and touched James’s forearm, and the fight left him.

“Then I am quite honestly still confused,” he admitted. “I’m not trying to be thick, I swear.”

Rose sighed and looked down at the carpet to pick at the threads as she murmured, “Lexa’s calling you ‘Daddy’. And you obviously don’t want her to.”

“I… What?” James spluttered. “Who said I opposed to her calling me that?”

Rose’s head snapped up to look at him with the most peculiar expression on her face. James felt his cheeks heat up, and he paid more attention than was needed to accept and hand off plastic rings to Alexa.

“What are you saying, James?” Rose asked.

“I love Alexa more than anything in the universe,” he whispered through the lump in his throat. “I thought you knew that. She’s the best thing in my life. And she isn’t even mine. And I thought you would be offended if she started calling me ‘Daddy’. Because she isn’t mine, no matter what I want.”

“You… You love her?”

“Yeah,” he admitted, the word barely audible. “Yeah, I do. So much, Rose. I’ve loved her since the first time I laid eyes on her in that hospital room with you.”

A sniffling sound broke through the roaring in his ears, and he turned to chance a glance at Rose. Tears were falling in fat drops down her cheeks, but she was smiling.

“You love her,” Rose whispered, swiping at her eyes.

“Of course I do,” James said, and he wasn’t entirely sure what possessed him, but he then blurted out, “And she’s not the only one here that I love.”

Rose’s face crumpled with more tears, and James waited with bated breath and hammering heart for Rose to acknowledge what he’d just said.

“M-me?” she asked, her voice small through her tears.

“Yeah,” James said, drumming his fingertips on the small red ring still in his hands.

Rose let out a giggle-sob, and she scooted closer to him. James reached out and cupped Rose’s cheek in his hand, hope swelling up inside him when she nuzzled into his touch.

“I love you, too, James,” she whispered, reaching up to rest her hand over his.

Anything that was left of James’s nervousness abruptly departed, and he was left feeling giddy and warm. He beamed at her, and he closed the distance between them until his thigh was pressed to hers as they sat side by side. He wrapped his arm around her hip in a sideways hug, and he pressed a firm kiss to her temple.

“I’ve loved you for so long, Rose,” he whispered. “You and Alexa.”

“We love you, too,” she murmured, leaning closer into his embrace. “And, just so we’re clear… you don’t mind that Lexa’s calling you ‘Daddy’?”

“I don’t mind in the slightest,” he assured. “It’s the most fantastic thing anyone has ever called me. I was worried _you_ would be upset by it. That’s why I was sort of ignoring Lexa earlier when she first said it in front of you. I panicked.”

Rose snorted out a laugh and tilted her head up to press a soft kiss to the underside of his jaw. The touch of her lips against his skin made him shiver, and he wanted so badly to duck down and catch her lips in a proper kiss.

But before he could make a move, Rose did. She pressed another kiss to the corner of his mouth, and let her lips hover there for a moment, as though allowing him time to pull back.

He didn’t. He turned his head and met her lips with a sweet kiss that felt so amazing. Her lips were soft and smooth, save for the small callus on her bottom lip where she liked to bite it. She tasted wonderful, and he angled his head to the side to deepen the kiss.

After many glorious minutes of snogging, they finally broke apart at the sound something falling over. The glanced around for Alexa, and found her by the bookshelf. She’d apparently tried to pull out a book in the middle of the stack, and they all fell to the floor around her, but she was happily sitting amongst the books and flipping through the one she grabbed, chattering to herself.

“You know,” Rose murmured, resting her head against his shoulder. “My child calls you ‘Daddy’, yet you and I haven’t even been on a date.”

“Well, I’ve come over for dinner nearly every weekend,” James mused. “That doesn’t count?”

“If you were counting them as dates, you never told me,” she teased.

“I’d always imagined one day they’d count,” he admitted sheepishly, the tips of his ears flaming red. “That one day I’d pluck up the courage and ask you out. Never quite got there ‘til now.”

“And even now, you haven’t asked me on a date,” Rose pointed out, smirking at him.

He rolled his eyes.

“Oh, all right,” he said with a long-suffering sigh. “Rose Tyler, would you like to go out to dinner with me? As a date? Say next week sometime?”

“Hmmm…” Rose tapped her finger against her chin. “I’d need to find a babysitter. My go-to guy is indisposed that night.”

James giggled, and he pressed a kiss to the top of her head feeling warmer and happier than he’d ever felt before, and feeling like the luckiest bloke in the universe.


End file.
